Saturday, December 8, 2012
John 1:1-18 [16] And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace.
THE INCARNATION ACCORDING TO JOHN: ETERNAL GRACE
This incarnate God is the one who gives grace for grace. We can translate this many different way. My favorite is to say grace because of grace. Thus we are met with an eternal chain of causes, where the answer to why is always because of His love. His love causes him to give and the giving of His love causes Him to give more. The character, love, or faith of man never once enters the equation.
When it comes to our giving we often hold back for any number of reasons. "They are just going to use it for alcohol." "They need to learn to work for themselves." "We are encouraging them to beg." Yet God never once withholds his grace because man is going to waste it.
In India it is common for begging women to rent children from their poor neighbors since they can get more money begging if they have children, of course they don't care about these children but beat and abuse them. This is such an abomination that one seems well justified in not giving to such women. And yet who am I to withhold because I judge someone to be unworthy of my puny little gifts?
The Incarnate Word does not withhold His gifts from any, even such as me. He showers His gifts equally on the adulterous women, the woman of Samaria, the Pharisee Nicodemus, the disciples, the lepers, and even the Roman men who pounded the nails through His hands. He gives and gives and gives. Always He gives first forgiveness, showing by the very way he talks to them that they are forgiven. Even the feeding of the five thousand, knowing how they will completely misread his intentions, He nevertheless gives and gives in abundance.
Perhaps it was this very thought which drove John to write about these people in such detail. He is showing what kind of people they were to portray more vividly the love of the man who is God. He is proving that he was the beloved not because he, John, was special but because Christ was. He is calling us to rejoice also in the ever giving forgiveness and love of the God who became man and died for our sins.
